Utah Lover

Take this guy for instance: Rick Reilly. His latest article on ESPN.com is about how Utah is the College Football National Champions.

Putting aside the fact that I’m obviously a Gator fan, I think this guy’s argument is ridiculous. Lets analyze his claim: Utah is the best team in division I college football. He is basing this basically on the fact that they did not get defeated this year.

Before I tear down his argument, I will agree that the current BCS system is ridiculous and we should have playoffs. I’ve discussed that before and will reiterate later.

Argument Tear Down

Now, his claim. Yes, Utah was undefeated, and did beat Alabama, who held the #1 spot a good part of the year. They looked great in that game. I won’t make excuses for Alabama, but obviously Alabama didn’t come to play and played a horrible game.

Now, who did Utah really beat during the season? Michigan seems like a quality win, although they won by 2 points and Michigan ended up being HORRIBLE this year.

I suppose Oregon State is a decent win, since they ended up beating USC, although I think this says more about how weak the Pac10 is.

The ranked opponents they beat? TCU and BYU. TCU they beat by 3 points (13-10). How good is TCU? They got creamed by Oklahoma (who Texas and Florida beat) and they beat BYU (who we’ll discuss next). Oh yeah. they beat Boise State by a point.

BYU. They didn’t really beat anyone this year.

In Summary

So, I honestly believe if you were to put Utah, Boise State, TCU and BYU in either the SEC, Big 12, Big 10, Pac10 or even the ACC, they they’d all have 2, 3, or 4 losses. Being biased, i’d definitely say thats true in the SEC or Big12 (the best 2 conferences in Div I football).

So Rick Reilly, you can claim that Utah as your own personal champions, but its a pile of horse poo. You probably are rewatching the Sugar Bowl right now while listening to Rick Astley, not only because he is your namesake, but you honestly like his music.

I sort of feel bad picking on Utah, for obvious reasons being Urban Meyer….and i’m not really picking on them, i’m picking on Rick Reilly. All the props in the world to Utah for beating Alabama (ha ha to Keith and Keri).

Anyway, this all boils down to once again, there is controversy, which means we need a playoff. DUH! I’m super amped that Florida is crowned the national champions, but I honestly think they could have beaten Utah, and USC vs Florida would have been another great game. It could have been settled on the field.

Denouement: Reiteration of Playoffs

There are 11 conferences. Give all the winners a chance. But they must have a bonified conference championship so that all teams play the same number of games. Either do away with an extra game for some, or add it for others. If you don’t have enough teams, combine some conferences. But lets assume they stay as is (with the exception of the Independents who will have to join one to compete for a national title)

So we take the 11 conference champions, and rank them by win-loss. Since there are playoffs, voting shouldnt matter right? If you think it does, you can still use the current voting system to rank them. I dont think the rankings matter as much since all champions get to play for the title. You take the bottom 6 teams (which more often than not I think will be MAC, WAC, Mtn West, Conf USA, Sun Belt, and Big East):

11 vs 6 = A
10 vs 7 = B
9 vs 8 = C

Then you take those winners and they play the remaining top 5 teams (example shown):

1 vs A = X
2 vs B = Y
3 vs C = Z
4 vs 5 = Q

I think you can do the rest of the Math:

X vs Y = P
Z vs Q = N

N vs P for National Championship.

So thats a 10 game playoff. When do bowls start now? like mid December? You can play the opening 3 games 1 weekend. The next round next weekend, final four new years day (wouldnt that be exciting?!) then Jan 8, national championship.

Seriously, i think EVERY college football fan would watch every playoff (bowl game) instead of now, where people watch the big 5 (although most people probably only watch about 2 or 3).

Flaw?

The only downside to this are all the other meaningless bowls that are just extra games for the school and the sponsors to make money. I know the world runs on money, so i don’t think money is a bad thing, and if they want to continue to have these other 1 off ‘bowls’ for maybe the conference runner ups (like the basketball NIT) thats fine.

So there you have it. Problem solved. National Champion is crowned on the field, and I would hopefully not have to see flimsy arguments by people named Rick on the homepage of ESPN.com.

Still reading? WOW! You are cooler than I thought. If blogs had a ‘handshake’ or ‘high-five’ feature, you would be receiving both right now.

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